Data Sources: Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, USAFacts, American Community Survey 2018 (5-Year Estimates) Note: Does not include cases not assigned to counties.
| Dependent variable: | |
| Deaths per Capita | |
| Population Density | 0.22*** (0.02) |
| % 65 and Above | 0.01 (0.02) |
| % Black | 0.33*** (0.03) |
| % Hispanic | 0.05* (0.03) |
| Median Income | 0.08** (0.03) |
| Gini Index (Economic Inequality) | 0.04* (0.02) |
| Black-White Dissimilarity Index | 0.05** (0.02) |
| Black-White Interaction Index | -0.05* (0.02) |
| % College Degree | -0.06* (0.03) |
| % Living in Correctional Facility | -0.03* (0.02) |
| % Living in Nursing Home | 0.10*** (0.02) |
| % Obese | 0.01 (0.03) |
| % Without Health Insurance | 0.08* (0.03) |
| Primary Care Doctors | 0.01 (0.02) |
| Hospital Beds | -0.03 (0.02) |
| Religious Organizations | -0.06** (0.02) |
| Civic Organizations | -0.06** (0.02) |
| Parks | 0.02 (0.02) |
| Service Orgs Focused on Elderly/Disabled | -0.02 (0.02) |
| State Fixed Effects? | Yes |
| Observations | 3,132 |
| R2 | 0.19 |
| Adjusted R2 | 0.17 |
| F Statistic | 36.64*** |
| Note: | Variables are population weighted and scaled, with a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1.***: p<0.001; **: p<0.01; *: p<0.05 |
Notes: Unit of analysis: U.S. counties.Only statistically significant variables at the .05 level are included in the coefficient plot. Other variables can be found in the table to the left.Bands are 95% confidence intervals.
Data for the analysis come from various sources.
Confirmed cases and deaths come from USAFacts, which collect the data from state and local agencies. The number of viral tests given, at the state level, come from the COVID Tracking Project, but they are not included in the analysis (see below).
Demographic and socioeconomic indicators – including total population, racial and ethnic makeup, income measures (both median income and income inequality), and education levels – all come from five-year estimates from the Census Bureau’s 2014-2018 American Community Survey. Data for number of people living in correctional facilities and nursing homes come from the 2010 Decennial Census.
Health indicators – the number of people that are obese, the number without health insurance, and the number of primary care physicians – come from the County Health Rankings. The number of hospital beds comes from the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data.
The analysis on the previous page is a regression of Covid-19 deaths per capita in the U.S. on a number of demographic, social, and economic indicators – all measured at the county level. I include state fixed effects, which tries to account for the fact that counties within a state have similar characteristics, including, in this case, state wide stay-at-home orders. Running the analysis without state fixed effects and including state-level viral testing capacity (which can’t be included in the fixed effects model) doesn’t substantively change the findings.
The formula for the Black-White dissimilarity index, for each county, is:
\[\frac{1}{2} * \sum_{i}^{n}\left|\frac{b_{i}}{B}-\frac{w_{i}}{W}\right|\] where \(b_{i}\) is the Black population in \(i\) Census Tract, \(B\) is the total Black population in the county, \(w_{i}\) is the White population in \(i\) Census Tract, and \(W\) is the total White population in the county.
The formula for the Black-White interaction index, for each county, is:
\[\sum_{i}^{n}\left[\frac{b_{i}}{B}*\frac{w_{i}}{t_{i}}\right]\] where all measures are the same as in the dissimilarity index, except that \(t_{i}\) is the total population of the Census Tract.
Social Risk Factors By County
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Median: 26.46 75th Percentile: 59.91
Median: 2.17 75th Percentile: 9.87
25th Percentile: 0.94 Median: 2.13
Median: 17.2 75th Percentile: 20.85
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